The cynics’ carnivalIn a very good column in the National Post, Rex Murphy accurately describes the sort of “speechless” reaction one has to the Ontario government admitting to wasting $180-million of taxpayer money by cancelling an already-under-construction power plant, purely as a campaign manoeuvre. Frankly, we think that what they did should be illegal; morally, if not legally, it is a form of corruption. But as Murphy says, people instead simply “resign themselves to the sleaziness … of the game. They learn to quietly despise politics” — not least since there’s no reason to believe any other party would resist the same urge. It’s not good at all.

Tom Flanagan, writing in TheGlobe and Mail, abandons his previously held objections to limits on third-party political advertising in light of the situation in Ontario, where unions spend massively more than the parties themselves and are “monolithically” opposed to the Progressive Conservatives, to the de facto benefit of the Liberals. “It would help if the bien pensants who express so much scorn for the role of money in U.S. politics would recognize that Canadian provincial politics, especially in Ontario, now have their own Super PACs,” says Flanagan — which is a very good point. But we’re intrigued as to how Flanagan came to abandon the free-speech argument, which we rather appreciate. It can’t simply be that people he doesn’t like are availing themselves of it.

Gordon Gibson, writing in the Globe, suggests that adopting democratic reform, namely the single transferrable vote, could help save the British Columbia and federal Liberals from extinction. There is a successful referendum on the books in B.C., Gibson notes, which would give it some democratic credibility. And it might allow B.C.’s Liberals and Conservatives “to interchange first and second choices,” thus staving off certain doom. In other words: Here is a chance for politicians finally to do the right thing, but out of naked, shameless self-interest. Could anything be more Canadian? Federally, Gibson suggests the Liberals and New Democrats adopt some version of Nathan Cullen’s co-operation plan, on condition “that the winning party (probably the NDP as we speak) would promise as a first item of business to bring in an STV system for future elections.” Bring it on, we say.

There are ways of forcing private health insurers to take on at-risk patients and of ensuring patients purchase the insurance they need, Postmedia’s Andrew Coyneconcedes, but they are merely “attempts to replicate what is already achieved by the ‘single payer;’ model.” Health care wait times are not improving, Coyne notes, even after the Chaoulli decision put the provinces “on notice” that “if [they] are going to deny people the right to buy their own insurance, [they] have an obligation to provide them with timely care.” He hopes the two Albertans taking their government to court over out-of-pocket medical costs might up the incentive, yet again, to make the single-payer model more efficient and sustainable.

Sun Media’s Ezra Levant continues his campaign against the new federally funded $2.5-million visitor’s centre at Bethune House in Gravenhurst, Ont., taking particular umbrage at Treasury Board Minister Tony Clement’s bizarre arrival by rickshaw, the playing of the Chinese national anthem, and the fact that Ottawa “has not yet provided a cent to the proposed memorial … for the victims of communism.” “This isn’t a call for a boycott [of China],” he concludes. “It’s just a call for some national self-respect — and the recognition that Mao was history’s greatest murderer, and Bethune was an accomplice.” We’ll keep an eye on the Parks Canada website to see if anything pops up along those lines.

In the Ottawa Citizen, Jonathan Malloyexplains why the idea of treating former Canadian prime ministers with some of the reverence Americans direct towards former presidents — as recently suggested by L. Ian MacDonald — doesn’t make a whole lot of sense: For one thing, heads of state “have a natural and perpetual legitimacy that transcends their former political lives,” and heads of government do not — especially if they’ve never even won an election. “Not all prime ministers are equal,” says Malloy, and it would be weird to pretend otherwise. Honouring PMs with personal libraries and museums, meanwhile, would be expensive and probably unpopular — besides which, unlike U.S. presidents, “Canadian prime ministers have never had much personal claim to documents from their ministries.” As he says, there may be a better and more useful role for our ex-PMs, but the American model doesn’t seem particularly relevant.

They eat cows, don’t they?The Post‘s Marni Soupcoff argues for the end of chuckwagon racing at the Calgary Stampede, suggesting that that while “it’s one thing to sacrifice animal lives for food or medical research … it’s another thing to sacrifice animal lives for light passing entertainment.” Barbara Kay counters that horses die in all equestrian events, and that they only exist in their current form to fill the need for entertainment. “Horses are bred to be used to their working potential, not to dot a bosky landscape so people can watch them graze, frolic and nibble grass.”

Finally, Jonathan Kayweighs in firmly on the chuckwagoneers’ side: “It’s not [pace Soupcoff] ‘one thing’ to kill animals for food and ‘another thing’ to risk them for entertainment. Since animals have no ‘rights’ (in the human sense), all judgments in regard to animal cruelty must proceed on the basis of pure cost-benefit analysis: i.e. How much violence and pain is inflicted on a sentient animal, in return for how much human benefit. The mere fact that you intend to eat an animal does not provide some sort of moral free pass that exempts you from this analysis.” We agree completely with that. Well said.

Duly notedThe Globe‘s Doug Saunders notes that the traditional moaning has begun about Olympic goings-on supposedly violating the “ideals” of the games: Officials essentially scalping tickets, for example, and the announcement that “13,500 armed soldiers, at huge expense, will be stationed at the Games, making them feel like an armed occupation.” Exclusivity is an Olympic ideal, says Saunders, and it has been ever since the IOC stripped Jim Thorpe of his medals for having made some much-needed money playing minor-league baseball. Quoting classics scholar Mary Beard, Saunders argues that “the IOC’s enemy, from the very beginning, was ‘the working-class lad who needed the cash to continue training, and who threatened the upper middle-class, Oxbridge/Ivy League club that dominated the Olympic community in almost every competing nation.’”

“It is undeniable that the FBI wants [Leonard] Peltier to die in prison — not necessarily because they believe he is guilty of murdering two agents [in 1975], but because they want someone, anyone, identified as responsible for the deaths,” Sun Media’s Peter Worthington writes, with obvious passion. “His trial and conviction stunk like rotting fish, based as it was on fabricated evidence and perjury — since admitted by many involved in his conviction.” And he is in terrible health. The time is fading, says Worthington, to grant some justice to “an activist for Indian welfare and rights who got caught up in the politics of the times and has been a scapegoat ever since.”

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